Don't Bet on the Iowa Caucuses Going Anywhere in 2016

No, FHQ wouldn't even bet on it if Ron Paul won the caucuses on January 3.

Now, I won't go as far as to say that it won't happen, but the odds are against Iowa's caucuses being removed from its position at the front of the calendar. And in the end that will have very little to do with Iowans or campaign surrogates there saying the caucus process was "hijacked". Assuming Paul does win the caucuses and then fails to capture the Republican nomination, that really is no different than Iowa caucusgoers choosing wrong in the past in nomination races in both parties. As FHQ has said previously, Iowa's role isn't to predict the nominee, but rather to winnow the field. Iowa caucusgoers don't necessarily anoint the frontrunner, they usually pare the field down to either that candidate (if the invisible primary has been at all conclusive) or the frontrunner and another couple of candidates (if the invisible primary has been inconclusive). Iowa's success rate at picking the nominee isn't/wouldn't necessarily be any better or worse than any other state in that position.

But I don't want to defend Iowa's position on the calendar again.

...not that I am.

FHQ is just mindful of the reality of the process that produces a presidential primary calendar every four years. The decision of whether to keep Iowa and/or New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina up front is up to the national parties. If the parties want them there, then there those contests will be. If not, the delegate selection rules will be crafted in a way as to (attempt) to prevent that. And sure, that brings up a perfectly valid point: Why couldn't Iowa Republicans and Democrats just pull a Florida and ignore the national party rules if those rules didn't protect Iowa's spot at the head of the queue?

They could. But the problem is -- and Romney is demonstrating this to some extent this cycle -- that candidates can keep Iowa at arms length if they feel they can win the nomination without Iowa. No, FHQ doesn't mean skipping. No candidate would ever skip the first state, but they could choose to limit their time there, biding their time until the right point. That, however, takes a certain type of candidate; a frontrunner or a self-/well-financed challenger. Iowa Republicans are really worried about that -- those internal factors like candidate visits/spending -- instead of the RNC changing the rules and reshuffling the order at the beginning of the process -- an external factor.

Let's look at those externals first and then revisit the other end of the Iowa equation. First of all, if a Republican wins the White House next year -- regardless of whether the Iowa caucuses correctly predict the nominee -- then Iowa will not be an issue in 2016. It may be, but it isn't likely. Why? Parties in the White House rarely tinker with their rules; especially if the objective is to renominate/reelect the president (see Klinkner, 1994). If there is one thing the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee said last year, it was that their main objective -- the party's really -- was to reelect President Obama. They were not going to discuss anything -- and certainly not a contentious "Iowa and New Hampshire shouldn't be first" debate -- that was going to rock the boat. Buttressing that issue, there is no evidence that the Democratic Party would push Iowa from its lofty perch. If anything gives a state party an argument for being in a particular position on the calendar (early, in other words), it is the other party in the state holding down an early position. And in Iowa's case, there is a tradition of the two parties holding caucuses on the same date.

It is slightly more likely that Iowa would be in danger if Obama is reelected. The Republican Party would potentially be willing to reexamine just about anything within their 2016 nomination process -- Iowa's position included -- if they lost in 2012. And the Democratic Party would be more willing to go along if there is some consensus -- intra-party and inter-party -- behind moving Iowa from the top or reforming the system in some small measure. [BIG ifs.]

No, I think what is most probable -- even if Ron Paul wins on January 3 -- is that Iowa is simply left alone. Neither party was particularly interested in opening up that Iowa/NewHampshire debate in the last round of delegate selection rule tweaking and it isn't clear that they would want to in the future. It's complicated as I think much of the writing on FHQ will attest. This whole thing -- the Iowa conundrum -- has more to do with the dynamics of this race and within the Republican Party right now. If there was a clear frontrunner right now and a win in Iowa  was viewed as the first win in a string of fairly sure victories (think George W. Bush in 2000), then said frontrunner will be there and so will the other candidates. However, if you have no clear frontrunner and instead someone who is kind of sort of ahead in the polls (or at least consistent in them) and overspent and got burned in Iowa four years prior, then you have a recipe for an indecisive Iowa result. It really is as simple as that. The dynamics of the last two Republican races have hurt Iowa -- as it would have a great many other states that could have been at the front -- if the measure is defined as Iowa choosing the eventual nominee. But that isn't Iowa's role in this process and that is part of the reason they aren't likely to go anywhere anytime soon.

Recent Posts:

Deal Would Push Consolidated Texas Primary back to April 3

Kasich Signature Places Ohio Presidential Primary Back on March 6

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: South Carolina

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Deal Would Push Consolidated Texas Primary back to April 3

Add one, subtract one.

As soon as Ohio rejoined Super Tuesday on March 6 an apparent deal between the Republican Party of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party has the Lone Star state on the verge of shifting its presidential primary -- along with the primaries for other offices -- back a month from March 6 to April 3. The deal was necessary to accommodate the need for time for the federal courts to resolve the redistricting dispute in the state, redraw the lines and leave enough time for the elections to be properly administered. With Texas now shifting off the Super Tuesday line on the calendar -- pending approval from the federal district court in San Antonio¹ -- the already less Super Tuesday relative to 2008 loses 155 Texas delegates. That leaves Super Tuesday as the date on the calendar with the most delegates at stake and brings April 3 -- with the addition of Texas -- up to the date with the third highest number of delegates on the line in the Republican nomination race; just ahead of April 24 (New York, Pennsylvania, etc.) and behind only Super Tuesday and June 5 (California, New Jersey, etc.).

However, the move does have consequences as FHQ alluded to in our Texas post this morning. Sure, Rick Perry is going to have to win some contests (Iowa and South Carolina???) to survive long enough for the southern contests on March 6, but now the Texas governor can no longer rely on Texas on Super Tuesday. And once this gets into March, it may take more than wins -- more like wins with attendant large delegate margins -- to survive and advance. In other words, with Texas pushed even further back on the calendar, Perry's chance of survival, much less a path to the nomination, takes a hit.

And even though FHQ got some resistance from the Republican Party of Texas -- the communications director and an Executive Committee member -- on the likelihood of RPT altering its allocation rules from proportional back to conditional winner-take-all, I can't help but wonder if the party may petition the RNC for a shift. As of now, the RPT line is that the October 1 deadline to finalize rules with the RNC has passed and the current proportional allocation is set in stone. [Sorry. These sorts of questions haunt me. It is a constant quest for a definitive answer where no wiggle room exists.] There may be no wiggle room here, but RPT could argue that their decision-making calculus would have been different had they known the courts would intervene in the redistricting fight and put the March 6 primary date in jeopardy. Now, the RPT argument is that the matter is settled and such a plea would fall on deaf ears at with the national party. That is entirely possible and signals that there may be no desire to make a change within the party. That may be true now, but this bears watching over the next [insert some definite period of time here]; whether sentiment within the state party changes on the matter of delegate allocation.  

--
¹ According to those close to the process, the courts left it up to the two state parties to hash out.

Recent Posts:

Kasich Signature Places Ohio Presidential Primary Back on March 6

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: South Carolina

Deal to Conditionally Split April Texas Primaries Emerges in Ongoing Talks to Resolve Primary Date Dispute

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Kasich Signature Places Ohio Presidential Primary Back on March 6

Ohio is back on Super Tuesday.

...again.

On Thursday, December 15, Governor John Kasich (R) signed HB 369 into law. The legislation passed by both chambers a day prior not only sets the new congressional district boundaries, but consolidates the once split presidential/US House primaries with the primaries for all remaining offices. The move -- the fourth shift of the year for the Ohio presidential primary -- puts the Buckeye state back in a position to potentially influence the Republican nomination race. That is a much easier proposition from March 6 than it would have been all the way back on June 12 in the next to last position on the calendar. As have mentioned previously, Ohio would be a unique state on March 6: the only Rust Belt state in a sea of southern/northeaster primaries and western caucuses.

UPDATE: One other note about this bill that is of great importance in the long journey that has been the setting of the Ohio presidential primary date is that because HB 369 was passed with an emergency clause, it took effect upon Governor Kasich's signature.

Recent Posts:

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: South Carolina

Deal to Conditionally Split April Texas Primaries Emerges in Ongoing Talks to Resolve Primary Date Dispute

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: New Hampshire

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: South Carolina

This is the third in a multipart series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation by state.¹ The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2012 -- especially relative to 2008 -- in order to gauge the impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. As FHQ has argued in the past, this has often been cast as a black and white change. That the RNC has winner-take-all rules and the Democrats have proportional rules. Beyond that, the changes have been wrongly interpreted in a great many cases as having made a 180º change from straight winner-take-all to straight proportional rules in all pre-April 1 primary and caucus states. That is not the case. 

The new requirement has been adopted in a number of different ways across the states. Some have moved to a conditional system where winner-take-all allocation is dependent upon one candidate receiving 50% or more of the vote and others have responded by making just the usually small sliver of a state's delegate apportionment from the national party -- at-large delegates -- proportional as mandated by the party. Those are just two examples. There are other variations in between that also allow state parties to comply with the rules. FHQ has long argued that the effect of this change would be to lengthen the process. However, the extent of the changes from four years ago is not as great as has been interpreted and points to the spacing of the 2012 primary calendar -- and how that interacts with the ongoing campaign -- being a much larger factor in the accumulation of delegates (Again, especially relative to the 2008 calendar).

For links to the other states' plans see the Republican Delegate Selection Plans by State section in the left sidebar under the calendar.


SOUTH CAROLINA

[NOTE: See also our additional examination of the post-sanctions delegate allocation in South Carolina.]

One note that FHQ has failed to mention to this point in the series is that there is a subsection to Rule 15 in the Rules of the Republican Party that not only carves out an early -- February, in theory -- position for Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, but it also exempts those four states from the proportionality requirement to which every other state is party. That exemption means very little in Iowa and New Hampshire as FHQ has shown, but in South Carolina, the rule is of great consequence in light of state party rules on the matter of allocation (see Rule 11.b).

The South Carolina Republican Party, by rule, allocates its national convention delegates on a winner-take-all basis by congressional district and statewide. Unlike some subsequent states FHQ will examine soon, however, South Carolina -- because of that exemption -- will not have to set a minimum threshold (50% of the vote or greater) by which winner-take-all allocation is triggered. If a candidate wins the statewide vote by one vote (with, say, 20% of the vote) that candidate is entitled to all of the at-large delegates (26 delegates before the 50% penalty for hold a primary before February). The same holds true for votes on the congressional district level (3 delegates per 7 congressional districts; 21 in total before the 50% penalty). Note also that there is no minimum vote percentage floor required to win delegates. That said, it is unlikely in a slightly (to greatly) winnowed field post-Iowa/New Hampshire that a candidate will win South Carolina with less than 30% of the vote. Both John McCain and Mike Huckabee cleared that threshold in 2008 in a very narrow victory for McCain. That isn't to say such an outcome cannot happen, but it isn't, perhaps, likely.

Through the first three contests, then, there is no change in the allocation rules in 2012 versus 2008. The sequence is the same, the spacing between contests is similar -- albeit without a Michigan primary between New Hampshire and South Carolina -- and the rules are the same. The only difference -- potentially -- are the dynamics of the race.

That may or may not change with the next state on the list: Florida. Things may get quirky with the Sunshine state.

Delegate allocation score: 0 [No change from 2008.]
Cumulative allocation score: 0 [No change through three contests from 2008.]

--
¹ FHQ would say 50 part, but that doesn't count the territories or account for the fact that there is no public information on Republican delegate selection in some states at this point.

Recent Posts:

Deal to Conditionally Split April Texas Primaries Emerges in Ongoing Talks to Resolve Primary Date Dispute

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: New Hampshire

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Iowa

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Deal to Conditionally Split April Texas Primaries Emerges in Ongoing Talks to Resolve Primary Date Dispute

Nolan Hicks at the San Antonio Express-News is reporting that multiple sources have confirmed that there are ongoing discussions about a deal moving a consolidated Texas primary -- including the presidential primary -- from March 6 to April 3. Furthermore, congressional, state legislative and other races awaiting new district boundaries would have primaries on that April date dependent upon whether the time between the primary and a court decision on the lines allowed enough time for implementation. Without the necessary time, those primary elections would be moved back to a late May date.

There are a host of interesting questions here, but FHQ will focus on the presidential primary aspect of this from which two main questions arise. First of all, this opening brings back to the fore the question discussed here yesterday: Would a shift  to a post-April 1 primary date cause the Republican Party of Texas to reconsider its method of delegate allocation -- switching back to a conditional winner-take-all system based on both the statewide results and the congressional district results from a proportional allocation?¹ On that point, FHQ actually got some interesting pushback from Chris Elam, the Republican Party of Texas communications director. In a series of Twitter exchanges -- best summed up here -- Mr. Elam made clear to FHQ that the current RPT delegate selection rules were submitted to the RNC before the October 1 deadline laid out in the Rules of the Republican Party, were approved and are set in stone now that that point has passed. Asked about any desire within the RPT to change back to winner-take-all rules, Mr. Elam said that it was premature to speak of such a change given that no decision has been made by the courts -- nor has a deal been cut between the two state parties -- and deferred to the unanimous vote on the rules change at the State Republican Executive Committee meeting on October 1.

There is nothing wrong with that explanation, but FHQ still detects a bit of wiggle room for the RPT on this issue. Let's look at those RNC rules a little bit more closely. Rule 15.c.12:

No delegates or alternate delegates shall be elected, selected, allocated, or bound pursuant to any Republican Party rule of a state or state law which materially changes the manner of electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates or alternate delegates or the date upon which such state Republican Party holds a presidential primary, caucus, convention, or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates to the national convention if such changes were adopted or made effective after October 1 of the year before the year in which the national convention is to be held. Where it is not possible for a state Republican Party to certify the manner and the date upon which it holds a presidential primary, caucus, convention, or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates to the national convention in effect in that state on the date and in the manner provided in paragraph (e) of this rule, the process for holding the presidential primary, caucus, convention, or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating, or binding delegates to the national convention shall be conducted in the same manner and held upon the same date as was used for the immediately preceding national convention.

There are few things there. One is that quite a few states made decisions to set primary or caucus dates after October 1. The four carve out states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- and just yesterday, Ohio, all set dates following the deadline codified in the rules. Rule 15.e goes on to describe the possibility of a waiver being granted for states whose parties cannot -- for whatever reason -- meet that deadline. That FHQ has heard, there has been no talk of any of those five states asking for or being granted a waiver on those grounds. [That doesn't mean there wasn't one.] The four carve out states may have been granted such a waiver or simply just blamed the Florida move for setting up a post-October 1 domino effect. In Ohio, the Republican Party shrewdly included a conditional provision in their RNC-sanctioned rules; adding a proportionality element to the at-large delegate allocation should the primary be scheduled before April 1. In the event that the redistricting dispute in the state left the primary date unsettled or forced it to a post-April 1 date, the rules would revert to winner-take-all statewide-congressional district as they had been in 2008.

Again, if RPT has the desire to change the delegate allocation rules, could it not argue before the RNC that the decision to shift to a post-April 1 date was triggered by court action that was out of the state party's hands to a great degree? In other words, could the argument successfully be made that the decision-making pre-October 1 would have been different had the party known it was going to have a post-April 1 presidential primary? Possibly, but it could also be that such a move is more trouble than it's worth and that Texas National Committeeman and RNC legal counsel, Bill Crocker, may not want to push too hard on that issue. [The counterargument is that Mr. Crocker would be well-positioned to help push such a change through.] Much of that depends on whether the desire is there within the RPT to make that happen. It's a big if.

...but that brings us to...


The second question has to do with how Texas Governor Rick Perry fits into all of this. It is apparent that the Perry campaign wants the primary as early as possible. It is also apparent that the Republican Party of Texas wants to follow the rules from the RNC.  But it is still perplexing to FHQ that any change was made at all to the Texas delegate selection rules. The rules utilized by the state party in 2008 would have been compliant with the new RNC rules before or after April 1. Again, the 2008 rules were winner-take-all by congressional district and statewide conditional on a candidate receiving over 50% of the vote. That is something that is completely within the letter of the law in the new RNC rules. Period.

So why the change? That is a very interesting question. If we assume -- as appears to be the case with the early primary date preference -- that the Perry campaign had some motivation (influence?) over the process of setting/maintaining the primary date, then was there some motivation to switch to proportional allocation as well?² The San Antonio Express-News article indicates that there is some pressure on RPT chair, Steve Munisteri, to keep the primary in March, so it is not a stretch to consider that the Perry camp put similar pressure on the party to change the rules.

But why? If the Perry folks are banking on an early Texas primary, why dilute the influence of the state by making the results proportional when that is not required? Why not leave the winner-take-all element in the plan in order to run up the score in the delegate count? It is all curious.

Now sure, the extent to which the Perry campaign was involved in all of this is an unknown and this is all quite speculative. However, it is undeniable that the Republican Party of Texas did not have to alter its delegate selection rules to comply with the RNC rules changes on proportionality. Something drove that decision and if it was even partially due to the Perry campaign, it is a counterintuitive calculation on their part with a delegate count as the backdrop.

Hat tip to Michael Li at txredistricting.org for the news of the deal.

--
¹ Yes, that would require those newly drawn congressional district boundaries, but recall that that portion of the plan -- the actual assignment of delegates based on numbers disaggregated into the new districts -- does not happen until the state convention. That isn't an issue, then.

² It is worth noting that Perry signed the bill that dealt with the primary -- SB 100 -- before he got into the race. The bill maintaining the March 6 primary date was signed in June before Perry entered the presidential race in August.

Recent Posts:

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Iowa

Ohio House and Senate Pass Bill to Consolidate Primaries on Super Tuesday

A Few Notes on the Impact a Later Presidential Primary Would Have in Texas

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: New Hampshire

This is the second in a multipart series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation by state.¹ The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2012 -- especially relative to 2008 -- in order to gauge the impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. As FHQ has argued in the past, this has often been cast as a black and white change. That the RNC has winner-take-all rules and the Democrats have proportional rules. Beyond that, the changes have been wrongly interpreted in a great many cases as having made a 180º change from straight winner-take-all to straight proportional rules in all pre-April 1 primary and caucus states. That is not the case. 


The new requirement has been adopted in a number of different ways across the states. Some have moved to a conditional system where winner-take-all allocation is dependent upon one candidate receiving 50% or more of the vote and others have responded by making just the usually small sliver of a state's delegate apportionment from the national party -- at-large delegates -- proportional as mandated by the party. Those are just two examples. There are other variations in between that also allow state parties to comply with the rules. FHQ has long argued that the effect of this change would be to lengthen the process. However, the extent of the changes from four years ago is not as great as has been interpreted and points to the spacing of the 2012 primary calendar -- and how that interacts with the ongoing campaign -- being a much larger factor in the accumulation of delegates (Again, especially relative to the 2008 calendar).


For links to the other states' plans see the Republican Delegate Selection Plans by State section in the left sidebar under the calendar.


NEW HAMPSHIRE

Who thought New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner's only job was to, well, depending on who you ask, either set the date of the presidential primary in Granite state or tear a hole in the space/time continuum by ruining the calendar every four years? Obviously, any secretary of state has additional duties, but the secretary of state in New Hampshire has a role to play in the allocation of delegates to the national presidential nominating conventions as well. In some states that allocation method is set by the state parties and in others it is set by state law.

Now, FHQ doesn't want to get into a broad discussion of this, but the state party has the ultimate say in how its delegates are allocated to the candidates for the national convention. Where state law governs this process, it is usually done with the blessing of the state parties. Court challenges on this sort of political matter typically are settled in favor of the party. The nominating function is after all a party function. Most often where these conflicts arise is over the issue of who can participate in primaries (opened or closed).² Rarely have we seen this come up in the area of primary dates or delegate allocation, but that could theoretically happen as well if a state party wanted to bring a challenge to court.

Needless to say, New Hampshire is one of those states where the allocation method is codified in the New Hampshire revised statutes. The law -- RSA 659:93 -- grants the secretary of state the power to:

"...apportion delegates to the national party conventions among the candidates voted for at the presidential primary by determining the proportion of the number of votes cast for each presidential candidate to the total votes cast for all presidential candidates of the same political party, rounded to the nearest whole number."

Furthermore, the law sets a minimum percentage of the vote whereby candidates qualify for delegates (10%).

With the penalty for holding a contest prior to February, New Hampshire's total delegation will be only 12 delegates, so there won't be a whole lot to go around. Regardless, like Iowa, there have been no changes to the allocation method on the Republican side in New Hampshire. The proportional method that is in place was in place in 2008 and stretching all the way back to at least the 1984 cycle (The last revision to the law was in 1981.). The new Republican National Committee rules regarding delegate selection, then, had no effect on New Hampshire. The Granite state was proportional already.


Delegate allocation score: 0 [No change from 2008.]
Cumulative allocation score: 0 [No change through two contests from 2008.]

--
¹ FHQ would say 50 part, but that doesn't count the territories or account for the fact that there is no public information on Republican delegate selection in some states at this point.

² The precedent for this is the Tashjian case in which Connecticut state law restricted primary participation to partisans only. The Connecticut Republican Party challenged that law, wanting to add independents to the mix and won based on a parties right to freedom of association under the first amendment.

Recent Posts:

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Iowa

Ohio House and Senate Pass Bill to Consolidate Primaries on Super Tuesday

A Few Notes on the Impact a Later Presidential Primary Would Have in Texas

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

2012 Republican Delegate Allocation: Iowa

This is the first in a multipart series of posts that will examine the Republican delegate allocation by state.¹ The main goal of this exercise is to assess the rules for 2012 -- especially relative to 2008 -- in order to gauge the impact the changes to the rules along the winner-take-all/proportionality spectrum may have on the race for the Republican nomination. As FHQ has argued in the past, this has often been cast as a black and white change. That the RNC has winner-take-all rules and the Democrats have proportional rules. Beyond that, the changes have been wrongly interpreted in a great many cases as having made a 180º change from straight winner-take-all to straight proportional rules in all pre-April 1 primary and caucus states. That is not the case. 


The new requirement has been adopted in a number of different ways across the states. Some have moved to a conditional system where winner-take-all allocation is dependent upon one candidate receiving 50% or more of the vote and others have responded by making just the usually small sliver of a state's delegate apportionment from the national party -- at-large delegates -- proportional as mandated by the party. Those are just two examples. There are other variations in between that also allow state parties to comply with the rules. FHQ has long argued that the effect of this change would be to lengthen the process. However, the extent of the changes from four years ago is not as great as has been interpreted and points to the spacing of the 2012 primary calendar -- and how that interacts with the ongoing campaign -- being a much larger factor in the accumulation of delegates (Again, especially relative to the 2008 calendar).

IOWA

The rules for Republican delegate selection in the Hawkeye state are no different than they were in 2008. FHQ could leave it at that, but let's dig into this a bit because the process in Iowa merits some discussion.

First of all, no one will know anything about exactly how the 28 Republican delegates from Iowa to the Republican National Convention in Tampa will be allocated until after the state convention. As of this writing, no date has been set for that convention. It was held in mid-July in 2008. That is a point after which the Republican presidential nomination is likely to have been decided -- unless you buy into all this terribly premature and very [Let me emphasize that more: VERY] unlikely brokered convention talk. This is notable because, according to the Constitution and Bylaws of the Republican Party of Iowa, "no delegate shall be bound by any pre-convention caucus and each county shall cast its vote by polling its delegation at the [state] convention."²

In other words, Iowa's non-binding precinct caucuses on January 3 will have very little to do with the ultimate allocation of delegates in the state. Now, as I've mentioned, it is naive to assume that there is no transference of presidential preference from one step of the caucus/convention process to the next -- that a Paul supporter can't make it through the process to the state convention, for instance -- but the fact that the state convention will take place after the nomination is wrapped up makes the point moot. Those 28 delegates will likely go to Tampa lined up behind the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

Binding or not, those caucus results on the night of January 3 will continue to winnow the Republican field. And that will be the point at which that winnowing begins in earnest.

Delegate allocation score: 0 [No change from 2008.]

--
¹ FHQ would say 50 part, but that doesn't count the territories or account for the fact that there is no public information on Republican delegate selection in some states at this point.

Recent Posts:

Ohio House and Senate Pass Bill to Consolidate Primaries on Super Tuesday

A Few Notes on the Impact a Later Presidential Primary Would Have in Texas

Republican Party of Texas Primary Election Schedule Defense is, uh, Interesting.

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Ohio House and Senate Pass Bill to Consolidate Primaries on Super Tuesday

The Ohio House this afternoon passed HB 369 (77-17), a bill initially introduced a month ago solidify the newly drawn/altered congressional districts as well as set the date of the state primary -- including the presidential primary -- for March 6. The Republican majority in the House, however, faced Democratic resistance to the those altered districts, and without the promise of a handful of Democratic votes to trigger an immediate "effective by" date, was forced to abandon the legislation in the hopes of a future compromise. That process was made even more complicated by the fact that the originally passed redistricting bill was the subject of a referendum petition drive to add it to the November 2012 ballot.

With that as a backdrop, a bill to set a consolidated primary date on May 22 was introduced a day ago. Yet, today a deal was struck between the Republican majority and minority party Democrats on a slightly altered map of redrawn congressional districts and to once again move a consolidated primary back to March 6.

For those tracking this at home the Ohio presidential primary moved from March 6 to May 8 to March 6 to June 12 and finally now back to March 6. That's four changes to the primary date since May:

1. ...moved the primaries from March to May (HB 194)
2. ...returned them to March from May (HB 319)
3. ...moved the presidential and US House primaries from March to June  (HB 318)
4. ...proposed moving those two sets of primaries back to March (HB 369)
5. ...proposed consolidating those two sets of primaries on May 22 (HB 391)
6. ...consolidated the primaries on March 6 (HB 369)

HB 369 was just passed by the Ohio Senate by a vote of 27-6 as well. The only thing separating the new districts and primary from taking effect is Governor John Kasich's (R) signature. The move shifts Ohio's 66 Republican delegates -- and yes, this changes the method of allocation ever so slightly -- from the next to last position on the primary calendar all the way back up to Super Tuesday. With or without the Texas primary March 6 will remain the date on the calendar with the most delegates at stake. With a handful of western caucuses, northeastern primaries and southern primaries, Ohio will be unique as a midwestern, Rust Belt primary and could be quite the battleground on that particular date.

To see more on the long and winding road that was the process of setting this primary date, scroll on through the Ohio history.

Update: HB 369 also shifted the filing deadline back to December 30. That will allow all remaining candidates the opportunity to file. Only Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich made the December 7 deadline.

Recent Posts:

A Few Notes on the Impact a Later Presidential Primary Would Have in Texas

Republican Party of Texas Primary Election Schedule Defense is, uh, Interesting.

Bill Introduced in Ohio House to Create a Consolidated Primary on May 22

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

A Few Notes on the Impact a Later Presidential Primary Would Have in Texas

Now, FHQ may have fanned the flames on this a little in the last line of last night's post on the hearing over the 2012 Texas primary election schedule. But let's take a step back for a moment and look at what happens in the event that the San Antonio district court forces a unified election on a date later than March 6. For starters, it seems like all parties to this case agree that it is probably impossible to resolve the issues inherent in the redistricting case, draw maps and have a timely response to those changes from local elections officials and filing candidates. In other words, either the Republican Party of Texas gets its wish for two primaries -- with the presidential primary continuing on March 6 -- or there will be a unified primary on some later date.

And yes, as Burnt Orange Report said last night, that we're talking about a state -- much less two -- changing its date in the middle of December before the primary season starts on January 3 is news enough. But that is where FHQ parts ways with how BOR assesses the impact of a potential date change for the Texas presidential primary. Well, FHQ agrees that it is an open question as to whether a later date -- especially post-April 1 -- would trigger a change in the winner-take-all versus proportional allocation methods within the Republican Party of Texas. But we will not overstate the nature of those potential changes.

As has been the case for a majority of this cycle, the broader discussion of the RNC delegate selection rules changes is being cast in black and white terms; that in this instance, Texas would be moving from completely proportional back to completely winner-take-all. That just simply is not the reality. A rules change (More on that in a moment.) that essentially reverted the Texas delegate selection process to the 2008 method -- see sections 8 and 9 toward the bottom of this RPT rules document -- would mean that Texas would change from being proportional to winner-take-all statewide and winner-take-all by congressional district. The winner-take-all allocation -- whether the at-large delegates based on the statewide vote or the three delegates per district based on the congressional district vote -- would only be triggered if one candidate won over 50% of the vote. Otherwise, the allocation would be proportional. And yes, there are some quirky combinations in there where the statewide vote could be winner-take-all for one candidate and another candidate wins a handful of congressional districts or where the statewide vote triggers proportional allocation and two or more candidates split winner-take-all allocation in some districts while others remain proportionally allocated.¹

Again, there is a significant amount of gray area between those two -- proportional and winner-take-all -- extremes in the Republican National Committee delegate selection rules.

The more important question if the courts force a later presidential primary date on the Republican Party of Texas is IF -- or can -- the party will decide to revert to their pre-October State Republican Executive Committee meeting rules. [Here are the current rules.] Let's take the CAN first. In conversations with Texas Republicans, FHQ has always been told that RPT is like the RNC: rules changes can only be made at the state or national convention. Sure, the RNC changed that for the first time in the post-reform era during the 2008 convention, but the RPT has an out. In the case of emergencies the party can make rules changes outside of the state convention setting (see Rule 1C). A court order mandating a later presidential primary date may be such an emergency.

But would the party be motivated to make that change in the event the primary gets pushed back beyond April 1? In defense of the winner-take-all rules and a first Tuesday in April primary date, RPT chairman Steve Munisteri in an open letter to Texas Republicans made clear that the party was concerned it would lose half of its delegates to the convention if it was forced to keep the March 6 date and not switch to proportional allocation. [At the time they were arguing that the rules could not be changed outside of the convention.] Having proven that it prefers the winner-take-all allocation -- which was fine with the new RNC rules given the 50% barrier for winner-take-all allocation -- and that it can and has the willingness to change the delegate allocation rules away from the state convention, the Republican Party of Texas would presumably move to readopt the triggered winner-take-all rules.

...and that may happen with some Republicans in coming out in favor of one unified primary.

There should be some resolution to this by the end of the week as hearings in San Antonio are scheduled for both Thursday and Friday.

--
¹ The proportional allocation of 3 congressional district delegates -- assuming no one candidate receives over 50% of the vote -- is done by allocating two delegates to the top vote getter and one to the runner-up. That allocation is in order so long as those two candidates are also over the 20% mark in the vote total within that district.

Recent Posts:

Republican Party of Texas Primary Election Schedule Defense is, uh, Interesting.

Bill Introduced in Ohio House to Create a Consolidated Primary on May 22

Is the March 6 Texas Presidential Primary Really Safe from the Court Squabble Over Redistricting?

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.

Republican Party of Texas Primary Election Schedule Defense is, uh, Interesting.

There was something that struck FHQ as odd in the filing the Republican Party of Texas submitted to the San Antonio Federal District court on Monday. [That filing was released today. -- via txredistricting.org]

Now, this is the same court whose decision in the Texas redistricting case was met with a stay from the US Supreme Court late last week. That decision has sent the lower court -- and the state parties in Texas -- scrambling to square the disarray the uncertainty into which the redrawn maps have thrown the 2012 primary season across Texas. The Republican Party of Texas wants to maintain the March 6 primary for the presidential nomination and a host of other statewide races and push the primaries for other offices -- those requiring the redrawn maps -- to May 29. RPT placed the greatest emphasis on the impact moving the presidential primary would have on the local party level:

Munisteri cannot emphasize enough to this court that moving the date of the Texas presidential primary, aside from placing difficulty, nay nearly impossible burdens on the administration of the Republican Party at all levels, but especially at the most basic level where it is wholly conducted by volunteers, will cause this court to likely change the result of the national Republican nomination for President of the United States. 

To be clear, the Republicans were most concerned in this filing with the possibility of the presidential primary being moved back to May 29 as well; a date that would make completing the process prior to the early June state convention difficult. The party also argued that moving the presidential primary would force local elections officials to find alternate venues for precinct conventions and pay for those from personal funds. But then came the interesting argument from the party: That abandoning the March 6 presidential primary date would affect the balance achieved by the Texas legislature in setting that date to "preserve this States' [sic] voters a voice in the nomination of the Republican and Democratic nominees for President of the United States." The party goes on to argue that it even changed from winner-take-all delegate allocation rules to proportional in light of requirements from the Republican National Committee in order to preserve that voice.

Now sure, moving the presidential primary all the way back to May 29 would more than likely push Texas out of the window of decisiveness in the Republican presidential nomination race. And that would make the shift from winner-take-all to proportional rules all for naught. But it appears as if the Texas Democratic Party was ready with a counterproposal that would keep all the primaries on one date -- the position they want. Instead of May 29 as the consolidated primary date, the Democrats are arguing for an April 3 primary date.

That date grabbed FHQ's attention. [In fact, I may be the only one.] Why? That was the date that some Republican legislators were pushing to move the primary to back in the spring during the legislature's regular session. Not only that, but that was a date that the Republican National Committeeman (and now RNC legal counsel) Bill Crocker and Republican Party of Texas Chairman Steve Munisteri argued for in a hearing on the primary date legislation before a House committee. Look at what FHQ had to say about that hearing in April 2011:

The committee substitute to HB 111 discussed in the hearing would move the presidential primary back to first Tuesday in April. That move was supported by both Republican National Committeeman from Texas, Bill Crocker, and Texas Republican Party Chairman, Steve Munisteri. Both cited the need to comply with national party rules concerning timing and stressed the potential penalties associated with violations (half or more of the delegation). That is not a concern on timing but is based on the rules regarding Republican delegate allocation in the state. As was the case for the Republican National Committee in every post-reform cycle but 2012, the Republican Party of Texas cannot change its rules except at its convention and the party would need to change its winner-take-all allocation method to comply with the RNC rules if the state maintained a March primary. In other words, the state party could not make the necessary change to its method of delegate allocation until its convention following the primary in 2012. This concerned both Republicans for the potential penalties associated with an inability to make that change. Interestingly neither Crocker nor Munisteri mentioned the potential for Texas losing significance for moving to a later date and both touted the possible advantages of not only maintaining the winner-take-all rules with an April primary, but also the additional significance that would carry if the nomination race was still being contested at that point.

Again, those matters are out the window if the court pushes a May 29 date. The RPT is absolutely right in that case. However, the court may be sympathetic to the April 3 date Texas Democrats are rallying behind. The only question is whether the court -- or the parties for that matter -- feels the redistricting plan will be in place by that point. It is already uncomfortable with the March 6 date for offices that require those lines, but is that extra month enough time?

...and will the Republican Party of Texas consider shifting back to winner-take-all delegate allocation rules if so?

Recent Posts:

Bill Introduced in Ohio House to Create a Consolidated Primary on May 22

Is the March 6 Texas Presidential Primary Really Safe from the Court Squabble Over Redistricting?

Waiver Granted, Missouri Democrats Will Proceed with February 7 Primary

Are you following FHQ on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook? Click on the links to join in.